The 19th Amendment guarantees American women the right to vote. Achieving this milestone required a lengthy and difficult struggle; victory took decades of agitation. Beginning in the mid-19th century, woman suffrage supporters lectured, wrote,
marched, lobbied, and practiced civil disobedience to achieve what many Americans considered radical change.

Between 1878, when the amendment was first introduced in Congress, and 1920, when it was ratified, champions of voting rights for women worked tirelessly, but their strategies varied. Some tried to pass suffrage acts in each state—nine western states adopted woman suffrage legislation by 1912. Others challenged male-only voting laws in the courts. More public tactics included parades, silent vigils, and hunger strikes. Supporters were heckled, jailed, and sometimes physically abused.

By 1916, most of the major suffrage organizations united behind the goal of a constitutional amendment. When New York adopted woman suffrage in 1917, and President Wilson changed his position to support an amendment in 1918, the political balance began to shift.

On May 21, 1919, the House of Representatives passed the amendment, and two weeks later, the Senate followed. When Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the amendment on August 18, 1920, the amendment was adopted. While decades of struggle to include African Americans and other minority women in the promise of voting rights remained, the face of the American electorate had changed forever.

Image Top Right:
House Joint Resolution 1 proposing the 19th amendment to the statesEnlarged
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Image Bottom Right:
During World War I, militant suffragists, demanding that President Wilson
reverse his opposition to a federal amendment, stood vigil at the White House
and carried banners such as this one comparing the President to Kaiser Wilhelm
II of Germany. In the heated patriotic climate of wartime, such tactics met
with hostility and sometimes violence and arrest.
Photograph by Harris and Ewing
Record Group 165
American Unofficial Collection of World War I Photographs
National Archives and Records Administration
( 165-WW-600A-5 ) Enlarged
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